Williams pace rings alarm bells at Mercedes

Williams' performance at the Austrian Grand Prix has acted as wake-up call for Mercedes, according to chairman Niki Lauda.

After mistakes by the Mercedes drivers in qualifying, Williams locked out the front row of the grid in Austria and took the fight to Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in the race. Valtteri Bottas finished six seconds shy of Hamilton in second and Lauda said that was enough to worry his team.

"The alarm bell is ringing that the competition is coming closer," he said. "If the alarm bell rings in time then you can do something, but if you sit back, which we won't try to do, you miss out. What we are going to do is keep developing the car."

Lauda denied Mercedes was holding something back and could have won the race be a bigger margin.

"We were fighting with the Williams. How many seconds were they behind in the end? Six seconds. They [Hamilton and Rosberg] were not playing around at the front, they were fighting each other and the Williams was six seconds behind. This is what I'm trying to tell you. Look at the times, Lewis and Nico were fighting from the beginning to the end. They went full blast from the beginning to the end like all the other races."